and very ready and willing to look to Clay for a livelihood. Within
three days a general tranquility and satisfaction reigned in the
household. Clay’s hundred and eighty or ninety, dollars had worked a
wonder. The family were as contented, now, and as free from care as they
could have been with a fortune. It was well that Mrs. Hawkins held the
purse otherwise the treasure would have lasted but a very little while.
It took but a trifle to pay Hawkins’s outstanding obligations, for he had
always had a horror of debt.
When Clay bade his home good-bye and set out to return to the field of
his labors, he was conscious that henceforth he was to have his father’s
family on his hands as pensioners; but he did not allow himself to chafe
at the thought, for he reasoned that his father had dealt by him with a
free hand and a loving one all his life, and now that hard fortune had
broken his spirit it ought to be a pleasure, not a pain, to work for him.
The younger children were born and educated dependents. They had never
been taught to do anything for themselves, and it did not seem to occur
to them to make an attempt now.
The girls would not have been permitted to work for a living under any
circumstances whatever. It was a southern family, and of good blood;
and for any person except Laura, either within or without the household
to have suggested such an idea would have brought upon the suggester the
suspicion of being a lunatic.
CHAPTER VII.
Via, Pecunia! when she’s run and gone
And fled, and dead, then will I fetch her again
With aqua vita, out of an old hogshead!
While there are lees of wine, or dregs of beer,
I’ll never want her! Coin her out of cobwebs,
Dust, but I’ll have her! raise wool upon egg-shells,
Sir, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones,
To make her come!
B. Jonson.
Bearing Washington Hawkins and his fortunes, the stage-coach tore out of
Swansea at a fearful gait, with horn tooting gaily and half the town
admiring from doors and windows. But it did not tear any more after it
got to the outskirts; it dragged along stupidly enough, then–till it
came in sight of the next hamlet; and then the bugle tooted gaily again
and again the vehicle went tearing by the horses. This sort of conduct
marked every entry to a station and every exit from it; and so in those
days children grew up with the idea that stage-coaches always tore and
always tooted; but they also grew up with the idea that pirates went into
action in their Sunday clothes, carrying the black flag in one hand and
pistolling people with the other, merely because they were so represented
in the pictures–but these illusions vanished when later years brought
their disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stagecoach is but
a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that
the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic “rough,” when he is out of the
pictures.
Toward evening, the stage-coach came thundering into Hawkeye with a
perfectly triumphant ostentation–which was natural and proper, for
Hawkey a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri. Washington,
very stiff and tired and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to
proceed now. But his difficulty was quickly solved. Col. Sellers came
down the street on a run and arrived panting for breath. He said:
“Lord bless you–I’m glad to see you, Washington–perfectly delighted to
see you, my boy! I got your message. Been on the look-out for you.
Heard the stage horn, but had a party I couldn’t shake off–man that’s
got an enormous thing on hand–wants me to put some capital into it–and
I tell you, my boy, I could do worse, I could do a deal worse. No, now,
let that luggage alone; I’ll fix that. Here, Jerry, got anything to do?
All right-shoulder this plunder and follow me. Come along, Washington.
Lord I’m glad to see you! Wife and the children are just perishing to
look at you. Bless you, they won’t know you, you’ve grown so. Folks all